


Something Off

by StevetheIcecube



Series: The Adventures of Spy Fitz and Eldritch Eight [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (TV Movie 1996), Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: AU, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Dr Nyarlathotep, Everyone is scared of the Doctor, Fitz is a super spy, Gen, I had to search that on Google fuck you, Spies & Secret Agents, This looks so silly, Who am I kidding I have read 1.6 of these novels, but it's serious I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:31:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2597084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StevetheIcecube/pseuds/StevetheIcecube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz is meant to be looking and seeing a man but he just sees a THING that is not a man at all. It's horrifying.</p><p>It's his new assignment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Off

**Author's Note:**

> Why am I doing this. Wow. I am so bad at this kind of thing. Based on a Tumblr post, and now I'm apparently trying to get the attention of the cool people who like this kind of thing by writing a fanfic...
> 
> Warning: probably body horror.

Fitz glanced at the file that was placed in front of him with unhidden curiosity. He had heard all about this person as he rose through the ranks. Everyone was talking about this guy, though stories and descriptions of the man himself were always changing, and only a very few things were ever the same in each tale. As he became a more prominent part of the organization, Fitz found that less information was hidden from him, as you would expect in a place like the military (he’d never actually been given a title and he didn’t know why, exactly, but he kept getting pay rises and moved to different places, so he assumed he was rising through the ranks). But this man that cropped up everywhere only got more and more puzzling as he heard more and more of the conflicting stories.

“Go on, Kreiner, you can go. He’ll be here tomorrow, I expect, but don’t be surprised if he shows up at some unholy time. Unpredictable man, always.” Another superior. He didn’t bother to learn the names, he had to call them all ‘sir’ anyway.

“Yes, sir.” He said, standing up and taking the file from the desk before leaving. He didn’t have anything to do tonight, he’d read it then.

He had a bad feeling about this ‘Doctor’ person, and he wasn’t quite sure why.

He flipped the file open the moment he’d sat down on his bunk, and several different pictures stared back at him. They sort of looked like people but the moment he stopped focusing on a definitely human feature everything looked horribly off. That finger was too long, the eyes too large but the neck too small, the shoulders rounded but almost square and stocky at the same time. All the pictures were like this.

He didn’t like looking at the eyes one bit, and he couldn’t pinpoint why. It wasn’t a strong feeling, just something tiny, nagging, there but not there, something dead but far too alive and rotten but still forming all at the same time and it just made him feel sick.

He closed the file and went to the drawers beside his bunk. Good. There were some sheets of paper he could use to cover those photos. He had no idea what he was going to do when he actually met the thing that called itself the Doctor. He supposed he’d just have to bear it. No one else had mentioned it in their stories about him. Maybe it was a photo thing. If it was that bad the thing had probably been told about it and toned it down in person or something. At least, he hoped so.

When he actually looked at the file’s contents, and not the pictures that were so wrong, he got part of an explanation. The Doctor was an alien, or a ‘Time Lord’, as the file said. It sounded pompous. And out of Fitz’s league. The alien had apparently first turned up to fight Yetis or Cybermen or something, the dating on all the accounts was incredibly mixed up. Then it had turned up in a different body and stuck around for a while with a guy called Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart at his UNIT HQ. There were all sorts of things for this guy, and fewer for subsequent bodies of the Doctor after he left to travel again or something.

The latest documented body that the Doctor had appeared in was, according to the word description; short, sturdy, an even odder face than usual, brown hair and eyes. Usual eclectic clothing choice, may be carrying an umbrella and a hat. When Fitz glanced at the photo keeping that in mind, it wasn’t so odd. He could see what he was meant to be looking for, and if he focused on that he could ignore the sensation of dread that came from looking at the photo. The thing looked ruthless in an odd way, too, more ruthless than the others.

Fitz gave the rest of the information a quick glance (always stay armed when he is around other aliens, he is likely to side with them, do not look him in the eyes for too long, no ranking officers may accept a short trip in his spaceship no matter what convoluted promises of return he makes) before locking the file in his drawers, feeling slightly more apprehensive about the alien that he would be interacting with tomorrow, if anything. Sure, he’d worked with a few aliens in his time, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t, here at UNIT, but he’d never worked closely with one. This was an assignment that he had been given as part of a very small team who would be assisting the Doctor, who had contacted UNIT with the intention of arriving in the morning tomorrow, and he had said he wanted a small team of people who weren’t ‘too soldier-y’ to help him with a disturbance in London.

He wasn’t at all excited for meeting the Doctor, but Fitz would say without hesitation that he was still incredibly curious.

 

Fitz was woken before dawn by a loud noise next to his ear and a sharp breeze blowing through his quarters. He sat up in bed and opened very blurry eyes to see a large blue box sitting right next to his bed.

The ship of the Doctor.

He looked over at the clock, and it was three am. It wasn’t dawn, or even anything that could be perceived as ‘tomorrow morning’. Tomorrow morning meant seven at the earliest, ten at the latest, from his experience, not three am. Three am meant unholy early time at which only the most secretive of missions or the cruellest of superiors.

Fitz slid his hand over to his drawers, key hidden, and unlocked the bottom drawer, pulling the gun out and to his chest slowly. It wasn’t loaded, but it would fool most intruders if he was pushed to it. He hoped. 

There was no one else in the quarters at the moment, none of them were on this assignment, so they were either out on patrol, doing something else, or at the pub or something. That was usually how it was. The box (TARDIS, his memory supplied) had landed right next to the bed, not even touching the beds on either side of it. Completely square, the door facing the wall.

The door opened slowly, and Fitz could hardly see in the dark, but the shape was vaguely human-like, shorter than him (physical intimidation possible), but it didn’t move like a human. It was smoother and more elegant, but also jagged, like there was some error in a computer game.

“Hello?” He said, immensely thankful for his voice not shaking for once.

“Oh!” Its voice was normal. Smooth, the kind you’d get on a voice actor or something. But normal. “I thought there was no one in here. It’s dark, after all.” And it spoke English.

“Are you the Doctor?” He asked. It seemed polite. If he got to the chase quickly, it might go away and he could get dressed and get it to go somewhere where it could wait for everyone else.

"I am." It said. "This is the right time, isn't it?"

Fitz almost laughed. "It happens to be very early, but yes. If you could move the TARDIS to somewhere more convenient, we can have the team ready in a quarter."

The Doctor seemed to nod in the darkness. "If this is UNIT in London, I'll land where the TARDIS used to go." It moved back into the TARDIS, and Fitz was left with an almost sour taste in his mouth. He looked down at the gun clutched under the blankets, and his hands were shaking. The Doctor wasn't even that intimidating. It (he?) seemed to be a small-ish man who appeared, at least, to have long curly hair. That was the impression Fitz got from the little spin the Doctor did when it noticed Fitz. It was a silly man with something very very off about it.

He got dressed quickly and brushed his teeth vigorously with more toothpaste than was really needed, but by the time he had finished they were feeling a lot better, and more ready to face the Doctor again.

As he walked up to the area where he was told to report to, he passed a green-looking soldier who nodded at him.

"Are you with that thing today?" The man asked. Fitz nodded. "Good luck then, you're going to need it."

Somehow, that didn't make him feel any better, but he thanked the soldier for the good wishes anyway and continued.

The person who was usually at the desk at this time was mysteriously gone, but the Doctor was not. The Doctor was there, and the light was on, and they were not a very short man with brown hair and a hat. They were a sort of short not man not anything thing with long brown hair that looked more real than the rest of them put together, and eyes he resolutely would not look at but he was sure somehow that he would never figure out what the colour was. In general, he got the idea he would be considered pretty, but when he stopped being general they were slightly bloated and sort of oozing but there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the face itself, it just felt wrong.

"Hello again." The Doctor said, and Fitz stopped staring. He really shouldn't stare. It would make him feel worse, but it was difficult not to stare. "You are the one from before, yes?"

Fitz nodded. "Fitz Kreiner. I'll be on your team today."

"Oh yes! Of course. There must have been a reason why she landed there." He (Fitz had decided on he for the moment, the Doctor spoke like a person, anyway) said. "Fitz. No title or sir?"

"The army isn't for me." Fitz said simply. And it wasn't, it really wasn't, too many guns and far too many jokes about 'the Germans', even now at the end of the twentieth century.

The Doctor nodded, and at that moment the person who was currently Fitz's superior came into the room, plainly not looking at the Doctor. It was obvious, and if the Doctor wasn't so terrifying, Fitz would have thought him incredibly rude.

"Kreiner, I need to speak with you for a moment. You don't mind?" He indicated that Fitz should step out of the room for a moment. He did so, not glancing back at the Doctor at all.

Once he was out of the room, it was like a pressure had lifted from his mind. The Doctor again.

"So, what do you think?" The man asked.

Fitz shrugged. "He's not exactly a usual job you give to me. That is what you want me to do, isn't it?"

His superior nodded. "He likes you, I can tell. If he doesn't invite you on, just make sure you're in there when he leaves."

"Will do, sir." Fitz sighed internally. He knew it would be like this, from the moment he was given the file. He wasn't a soldier. He was a spy. He'd been a rebel, sympathiser, diplomat, alien, citizen…he blended in. Learned information. Then he reported back to UNIT. He'd never found it difficult. In fact, the only thing he'd ever struggled with was the allergy to the fake scales he had to wear for a month straight. And the swelling. Bed ridden for a week before he could give a report on the information. He knew this was coming as soon as he was told he was meeting the Doctor, but he hadn't wanted to accept it.

"Good. This will be dangerous, man. You have to be careful. And you have to find out what he is. Why we're scared. And how we can stop it."

Fitz nodded. He knew what he had to do, and it was going to be difficult. The Doctor wasn't some Silurian he had to see if he liked the planet and was satisfied. The Doctor was a being that looked like a man but really wasn't and just a thing that was so off, so ancient and nauseating and worrying and he let off an air like a bad therapist who tried to make you feel safe but didn't know how, but also felt like a person who just wanted everyone to leave him alone and never see him again. And that was going to be hard to get past. A façade that contradicted itself and a repelling, terrifying creature that he had to fool and get information from.

He could do this.

\--

They were looking for aliens, of course. The Doctor said he'd found traces of alien energy, probably from a crash of some kind. There was nothing here but fog, damp air and bits of shrapnel. The walls were made of wood, and were probably painted blue at some point, but they were crusted in a dark mould.

No one on the team was really managing to look for any aliens. They were all glancing apprehensively at the Doctor whenever they thought he wasn't looking. And Fitz couldn't blame them. He couldn't trust the Doctor one bit, but he was acting like he might be willing to, so the Doctor got a good impression. The Doctor just…he kept smiling. Smiling at people like a normal person. But the smile was jagged, and the teeth were slightly sharper than looked friendly, and that was making everyone nervous, Fitz included, but damn if he was going to admit that to the Doctor, and he’d certainly never show it, if he was trying to get the trust of the alien. Which he was, because then he would receive the information he needed to leave.

Long story short, no one could find any aliens because they kept looking at the Doctor instead because they were scared of him.

When someone finally found something, it was, predictably, Fitz (though it could have been the Doctor. He was the one who didn’t have to look at a scary not human thing), which he hoped earned him some brownie points in the Doctor’s eyes (the Doctor didn’t seem like the person to appreciate company that wasn’t useful). It was something rather large, too, not a fragment of alien metal. It was an insectoid corpse as large as his head. It was mostly an empty husk, now, but it had been a dark green colour. It was found under a loose floorboard, so they got to work pulling them all up. They found five more, and no ship. They had all been dead for quite a while, according to the Doctor, but none had died at the same time. At least a month between the oldest and most recent corpse.

“Disease.” He said simply. “They aren’t used to the pathogens on this planet. Complicated things they are here.”

Fitz nodded, but really he was wondering how the Doctor could know that from a glance and a sniff. It was probably some kind of alien sense he had. Death scent. That would make sense, considering how horrible he looked. There had to be some use to that horribly off appearance, and it definitely wasn’t charisma.

When the Doctor had poked around a little more, finding nothing of use, he finished. “Well, I think we’re done here.” He said briskly, glancing at the soldiers who were just staring pointedly at their own feet. Then he smiled and rubbed his hands together, but it looked more like his face was splitting apart to reveal a cavern that wasn’t there, and his fingers were too long and sharp and not the right shape to slide past each other and the action looked raw and slick and horrible.

;’;’;’;’;’;

They all went back to UNIT, arriving before eight in the morning. The Doctor was going to leave pretty soon and Fitz wasn’t at all close to sneaking on to the TARDIS or the Doctor inviting him on. The man had barely glanced at him for the whole time, except to smile that terrifying smile whenever he said something remotely intelligent. Fitz thought it was meant to be a ‘humans are so quaint’ smile, but it looked more like an ‘I will kill you when you are sleeping for no reason other than the fact that I am a monster’ smile to Fitz. It was distracting him from saying anything remotely intelligent, but he was better at pretending it wasn’t than the other people on the team.

No closer to his goal, Fitz decided that he would hang around awkwardly with the Doctor (who was talking to his superior) now everyone else had long since fled back to where they thought they would be safe. His superior looked very uncomfortable whilst being spoken to completely normally by the Doctor. Fitz could see why they had sent someone who wasn’t an alien expert after the Doctor, because alien experts weren’t actors, they were scientists.

“Fitz!” Fitz jumped out of his thoughts at the very friendly sound of the Doctor’s voice calling his name. “Can you come with me a minute?”

Fitz nodded, glancing back at his superior as he followed the Doctor quickly down the corridor. He was smiling, and he gave Fitz a quick wave before Fitz moved out of sight.

He wished he’d packed a bag, because he was pretty sure what was going to happen next. And he was pretty sure that he’d need another pair of shoes, a coat and some bandages. And some headache pills, if he was going to be spending a lot of time with the Doctor.

They stopped outside the TARDIS. “As you may know, this is my ship.” The Doctor said. “You seem a very decent person, but you have duties here and such, I expect you don’t want to spend too much time away.”

Well, this was easier than he expected. Far easier. The Doctor was practically begging him to come with him. He wondered what he’d done to seem so great in his eyes. He hadn’t really done anything remarkable. His foot had fallen through a rotting floorboard and he’d found those aliens. That was it. He’d been just a silent and avoiding as all of the soldiers had been.

The Doctor unlocked the door and opened it, and with a sweep of his arm (it seemed longer when he moved it than when it was resting by his side) Fitz had managed to get half of his difficult task done.

It was larger on the inside. Larger. Huge. He knew that it was meant to be bigger on the inside, but not that big. It was so large, with a sort of circle in the centre, with a column going up to the ceiling. The whole room was sort of circular too, but he could see doors going out of the room. He’d sort of imagined the TARDIS to be slightly smaller than this, and one room. But it was…well…huge.

The Doctor was standing next to him, waiting almost expectantly for him to say something, he expected.

“It’s very large.” He said. The Doctor laughed, and it was a nice, melodic sound if you didn’t look at him.

“Come on, Fitz. Let’s go.” Well, there was no going back now.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love it if people told me if that's what they were thinking of with the idea of Dr Nyarlathotep?

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Something Off (Podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2638505) by [StevetheIcecube](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StevetheIcecube/pseuds/StevetheIcecube)




End file.
